updated 03:05 pm EST, Mon January 24, 2011

Digital Storm Enix cools vertically

Digital Storm brought out a rare air-cooled but heavily overclockable gaming PC on Monday in the Enix. Only seen in a handful of boutique cases before, its design rotates the mainboard 90 degrees and vents heat naturally from the top instead of trying solely to force it out with fans. The extra help lets users overclock to as much as 4.7GHz; Digital Storm didn't say with which processor, but it may not need water cooling.

The design has hard drive and optical drive bays still mounted on the side to take them out more easily, but it also puts a special bay at the top that includes a pair of USB 3.0 ports. Enough expansion is onboard to carry two NVIDIA video cards in SLI.

Enix pricing caters to a level of entry- and mid-range gamers. The $1,132 entry level version starts with a 3.1GHz Core i3, 4GB of RAM, a minimal GeForce GT 220 and a 1TB hard drive. Speed updates bring it to as much as a 3.3GHz Core i5 or 3.4GHz Core i7, along with as much as 8GB of RAM and a GeForce GTX 580 at the peak $2,160 price. All of the systems are available to order today, though their ship times can depend on the build.